1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium such as an optical disk or the like, a recording method using this recording medium and a recording apparatus using the same, and particularly to a technique using a recording medium which has a write-once recording area.
2. Description of the Related Art
Systems of billing transaction include on-line systems and off-line systems: on-line systems access a billing information management center by telephone or over a computer network, etc. to complete billing transactions, whereas off-line systems store billing information on a magnetic recording medium such as a telephone card or IC card, etc. to transact for billing off-line.
Off-line billing systems are already widespread as a prepaid card, etc. because they are simple in system structure and superior in mobility as compared with on-line systems.
Each of these off-line systems employs a rewritable recording medium to process for billing, so that there is some fear that the billing information may be falsified, causing considerable damage. For this reason, counter-measures have been proposed, such that the billing information recorded in the recording medium is enciphered, or a structure is incorporated that if anyone attempts to analyze recorded information by force the information is then destroyed. However, the actual situation is that no solution has been obtained because of problems of cost and convenience, and a vicious spiral between the security measures and rapid progress of deciphering techniques.
An object of the present invention is to prevent effectively the illegal use of off-line billing processing systems.
In order to achieve this object, the present invention employs for billing processing, a recording medium having the write-once recording area in which any information can be recorded, but the recorded information cannot be rewritten, and having a billing information recording area in which the billing information is sequentially recorded a single time in the write-once recording area.
The write-once recording area of the recording medium makes it impossible to erase any information that has been written into it. Therefore, providing the billing information recording area in the write-once recording area makes it difficult to wrongly (illegally or without authorization) use the billing information.